About an hour south of Las Vegas lies the tiny ghost town of Searchlight, NV. The sagebrush strewn community is known for several things:
One is the Nugget Casino, which advertises 10 cent coffee and $1 beer.
Another is its gold mines which produced over $7 million in gold when the metal was selling for $10 an ounce (worth $800 million today).
And another is the fact that retired U.S. Senator Harry Reid Jr. was born there.
A Utah prospector named George Colton, who was en-route to Arizona's Superstition Mountains to search for the fabled Lost Dutchman Gold Mine, stopped in the area in 1897 to do some panning. He named the town when he joked it would take a 'searchlight' to locate any gold in the district.
He was wrong.
He found rich gold-bearing deposits in two hills and filed a mining claim to develop his new mine -- The Duplex. The mine made Colton rich and the town's population grew from 50 to more than 1,500 within 10 years.
Over the years a post office, a narrow-gauge railroad, and a regular railroad, the Barnwell and Searchlight, were completed by 1907. The 16-mile narrow gauge railroad led from the mine to a mill on the Colorado River. The regular railroad had its tracks washed out by a flood in 1923. When the gold deposits were exhausted, the mines closed and the miners left.
That is just the beginning of the story
Harry Reid Jr. grew up in a wooden house with no bathroom and no hot water. He and his three brothers were the sons of a gold miner who became an alcoholic and who committed suicide in 1972 at the age of 58. His mother worked in one of the town's half dozen brothels doing the laundry for the girls who worked there.
During his early career in the U.S. Senate, Reid bought land and built a house in Searchlight. As the years passed and the price of gold rose to over $1,300 an ounce, mining company representatives took an interest in the abandoned mines around Searchlight.
In July 2014, a company based in South Dakota approached Reid and offered to buy 110 acres of land and house for $1.75 million. Reid quickly signed the contract.
The new company, Nevada Milling and Mining, moved into the area and installed rock crushing equipment in two mines. The Blossom and the Coyote covered about 100 acres of mountainous terrain in the Opal Mountains. Company supervisors planned to hire between 40 and 60 miners to work an estimated 200 tons of gold-bearing rock per day.
The less than 550 people who live in Searchlight, most of them in mobile homes, are still waiting for Searchlight to become another boomtown.
Nevada Milling and Mining recently sold its rock crushing equipment. The company is holding on to its mining leases for possible future production. And the locals are still holding their breath.
The colorful area at one time had seven brothels, including the El Rey, operating legally in Clark County. Several brothels are still open and the Nugget Casino continues to offer .10 cent coffee and $1 beer to its customers.
Reid, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1987 to 2017, is still sitting on his $1.75 million and waiting for the mining company to deliver on its promises.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a commercial airline used to make champagne flights from Burbank, CA. to Searchlight. For $10 per person, the airline granted customers a round trip and presented them with a free bottle of champagne. The airline ceased its flights when one of its planes crashed, killing everyone on board.
Searchlight is nicknamed the Gateway to Lake Mohave. It's located just 14 miles from Cottonwood Cove, a popular largemouth bass fishery. One town resident said:
"Gold is where you find it and we believe there is still a lot of gold to be mined in this area."
We'll just have to wait to find out if it's true.
